I'm seeing a rapid trend towards worse and worse question quality. It gets to the point where I'm asking myself "Why did I even help this guy? He neither has the will nor the capacity to understand the answer; I have just been wasting my time". That happens more and more often lately and is pretty frustrating.

It could be that this is the filter bubble effect of the tags I've chosen on my home page (mostly web development stuff). Maybe other topics aren't overrun by what I perceive as completely clueless people who ask the same basic questions again and again and again and can't be bothered with actively participating in getting their problem solved (searching, researching, posting their code, stating their intentions, listening to advice, and giving feedback).

I'm getting the feeling Stack Overflow has made a big step in the "Mechanical Turk for programming assignments" direction lately. It's always been something like that, but it's starting to get really bad now.

What's your view on the state of affairs in Stack Overflow - is your perception similar to mine? If yes, how are you dealing with it, other than retreating? If no, what do you do against creeping cynicism (because that's what really worries me here)?

Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise.
If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.

@RichardTingle Maybe it's not getting worse, but good questions are definitely few and far between - certainly in the web technologies sections.
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RGrahamApr 28 '14 at 12:06

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@Richard, that's not a matter of the current generation wrongly perceiving the state of the previous generation. This phenomenon is pretty recent (I think it started 6 months ago as far as I am concerned). I'm active in several tags, and it really seems the average quality of the questions has gone from tolerable to ridiculous almost overnight (and is not getting back up).
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Frédéric HamidiApr 28 '14 at 13:10

35

Same experience with Java / Android. Personally I think it's ever since The Summer of Love where we decided we should be "nicer" ... with the last 6 months being a nightmare.
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Brian RoachApr 28 '14 at 13:30

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This reminds me of the "remember when 4chan was good" meme
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Sam I amApr 28 '14 at 15:25

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In Python, even FAQs are not closed. It seems that a fresh perspective is needed every hour that a faq is posted.
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devnullApr 28 '14 at 16:07

Repwhores answer faqs and refuse to vote to close. Oh my! internet dollars. It's not because of the poor questions, but because of these repwhores that the quality of site is going down.
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devnullApr 29 '14 at 2:35

I have to agree with @devnull. I've recently come back to the python tag and it is blowing my mind. There are even up-votes for questions that make no sense, wrong answers up-voted and selected, and a reluctance to answer to comments by clarifying questions/answers. I with my daily vote quota was higher. There may well be a correlation between bad quality and tag popularity, reflected in the rise of popularity of SO as a whole.
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juanchopanzaApr 29 '14 at 6:15

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Throwing in my $0.02 here, but I think the problem is that SO is perceived as a first line of enquiry by people. I'm still fairly new to SE as my (cough totally meaningless) rep indicates, but in my question tags I'm consistently seeing the same type of I don't really understand what I'm doing, fix my code questions. The code in question is totally devoid of any kind of knowledge about the architecture in which it is going to be deployed. Am I to understand that I should just keep linking to the basic documentation for these people?
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JamesApr 29 '14 at 8:10

8

@Izkata, yes, it might be our own September That Never Ended. We still would have to determine what has changed last year, though. It's not like AOL has started to serve Stack Overflow as their default portal. Wait...
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Frédéric HamidiApr 29 '14 at 18:22

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I shocked by the current Hot Qutestion. Is this reflecting the level of SO users? I mean this is just basic mathematics, has mathematics been dropped from programming course?
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BoluApr 30 '14 at 13:37

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@Bolu That question having more than 100 upvotes discourages me so much that I almost want to quit the site. If I didn't use it for asking questions of my own, I probably would.
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durron597May 2 '14 at 18:26

50 Answers
50

You're seeing something I've been talking about for a while, and it boils down to the motivation people find to become programmers.

Many of us were the kids that could not go to bed until something compiled, or we figured out how something worked. When we weren't programming, we were thinking about programming. Things in nature reminded us of concepts in programming, it was an all-consuming drive to learn as much as we possibly could about it. I never dreamed that I'd be working with C professionally all those years back when I was up at night modifying the source code to my BBS system.

Things are a little different today. Folks are entering this field not because they have any real drive, love or talent for the craft, but because they want the financial security and social notoriety that comes with the job. They're not ever going to be good programmers because they probably aren't ever going to think like one. This job requires a degree of natural talent and not everyone has it - just like painting, sports, writing ... you name it.

Knuth bless 'em for trying to do something fantastic with their lives, they've become quite a drain on us and other resources. This is something that the whole industry is seeing, which naturally reflects here. From my perspective, it's extremely frustrating to watch them repeatedly throw themselves at a wall while the rest of you repeatedly bang your heads on your desk.

There is something we can do, which I have open as I type this. Question blocks worked well enough at the scale where we were when we implemented them, but they are fundamentally flawed in many ways. One way is how easy it can be for folks to request account deletion, and just come back a few days later with a clean slate. We try to catch this, and do a somewhat good job of doing so, but the volume is now at such where something better is needed.

My initial solution is simple - if you're post blocked and request account removal and then return, you're limited to one question per week until you manage to get a few hundred rep. If you're suspended and request deletion then return during your suspension period, you pick up where you left off with it. That's going to take a bite out of recidivism, hopefully a substantial one.

It's not a full solution. As Shog9 has been saying, new users must see the ability to ask questions as a resource that can quickly deplete in order to consider conservation, or asking questions only when you really need to and making them count when you do. That is the way to fix this problem for us, and I hope to take the first steps toward it this week.

As someone who interviews and hires as part of their job, I can say with some authority that you are spot on re: the quality decline on SO mirrors that of the quality decline in the industry as a whole. While I try not to paint with broad brushes, I tend to agree with your reasoning on the why. The problem I see is that SO seems to want to encourage this by being "nicer" which isn't serving anyone except ... the people you describe (and that, arguably, isn't a good thing for the industry).
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Brian RoachApr 28 '14 at 15:19

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@TimPost I'm not talking about insulting people when I say "nicer". To be clear, there's no need to be rude / elitist. But IMHO there's a difference between being rude vs. hurting some special snowflake's delicate feelings by explaining (without malice or snark) that they can't just hamfist some words into the editor, dump their code, and have people fix it for them / do their work for them. It really feels like SO went a bit too far and the pendulum needs to swing back a bit.
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Brian RoachApr 28 '14 at 15:26

164

This is where folks have repeatedly gotten confused by Stack Overflow's "be nice" rule, @Brian: being nice does not mean always giving someone what they want. Down-voting, closing, deleting bad posts makes the site better for everyone, but leaving rude comments or unhelpful answers makes it worse - again, for everyone. So the trick is to do the former without becoming frustrated enough to engage in the latter.
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Shog9♦Apr 28 '14 at 15:36

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@FrédéricHamidi I have to admit I've been doing that too, answering questions which in hindsight maybe shouldn't have been answered. And I can tell you why I did it too. It's because I'm one of the generation Tim talks about, tinkering as a kid, barely aware that this might actually make me money later on. And whenever I see a stupid question, that reminds me of what I was like in the early days. And I remember how much help I got from experienced people back then, and how I must have annoyed them. But having seen the new generation at work, I am starting to realise that they're not like us.
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biziclopApr 28 '14 at 15:45

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w/r/t "answering questions which in hindsight maybe shouldn't have been answered" - part of my hesitation with that (and I certainly don't answer every question I could, but equally certainly I don't leave out every question I could, either) - We are way past the point where the clueless begin to help the clueless. Seeing completely wrong solutions up-voted and accepted because neither the OP nor the first person to answer know what they're doing makes me twitch.
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TomalakApr 28 '14 at 16:00

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@djechlin It's not elitist, it's simply seasoned, well-scoped and well-reasoned. After processing over 70,000 flags on the #1 site for programmers, you begin to gain perspective. Remember, I was a moderator for a few years before I came to work here ;) (in fact I still am one, just inactive)
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Tim Post♦Apr 28 '14 at 17:22

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@Shog9: We've spent a lot of time and effort trying to get people to not treat questions as Too Localized or Not Demonstrating Sufficient Effort. Should we be all that surprised that "error in javascript code" happens more often than we would like it to?
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Robert Harvey♦Apr 28 '14 at 17:39

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You're forgetting the most dramatic recent change, @Robert: dropping questions from the close queue that don't yet have at least 2 votes/flags. I don't buy that folks are struggling to find a reason to close blatantly-awful questions - the bigger problem is directing those efforts to where they make the most difference. I think it's time to end this preoccupation with a backlog of questions no one cares about and invest in a system that emphasizes fast closing of recent questions.
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Shog9♦Apr 28 '14 at 17:45

@djechlin: Neither I nor Tim Post's opinion has any bearing on anyone's career decisions. I wish your female friend luck. But programming is aggravating enough where you really need to have some aptitude, desire and persistence, or you're not going to be any good at it. I would merely submit that the folks getting into it so that they can write the next Flappy Birds and get rich are probably not going to make very good question askers on Stack Overflow. Just sayin'.
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Robert Harvey♦Apr 28 '14 at 18:05

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@djechlin: I'm not an employee, just an unpaid janitor.
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Robert Harvey♦Apr 28 '14 at 18:10

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I think it's fair to say there are people who are competent because for them it's a labor of love, and people who are competent because they make it their business to be good at whatever job they decide to take, @djechlin. There are also a lot of people - in every profession I've ever worked in - who are there because it keeps them off the dole and whose only goal is to clock out at 5PM and damn the consequences to everyone around them.
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Shog9♦Apr 28 '14 at 18:11

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@djechlin: I can understand why you're taking umbrage at Tim's post (ahem), but I submit to you that you've got his argument the wrong way 'round: the major premise is "can't think like a programmer"; "doin' it for the moniez" is the minor premise, a possible reason why so many people clearly fitting the first clause are trying anyways. I don't think that he or anyone else here would reject someone who demonstrates ability. The reason she wants to program is completely irrelevant to SO.
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Josh CaswellApr 28 '14 at 19:49

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To be very clear, I'm in no way eliminating or casting out people that just don't know anything about programming. I'm encompassing those that will never, despite asking hundreds of questions on the Internet, ever learn how to solve problems that are intrinsic to programming. They will continue to suck the blood of communities such as this because that works for them, and that is what I'm determined to slow significantly. Anyone that puts any fruitful effort into learning this craft is exempt from that particular type cast.
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Tim Post♦Apr 29 '14 at 13:11

13

A very disappointing answer, the community leads are not on top of this problem. Explaining the problems of the past 6 months away with a trend that's been going for well over 10 years is not an explanation and offers no hope that it is going to get resolved. High time that the community leads start to take responsibility for the changes they forced down our throats and re-evaluate the consequences.
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Hans PassantApr 30 '14 at 13:47

The question quality will continue to decline as long as we continue to reward the bad questions with answers.

I'm willing to repeat an unpopular view here: We need to stop rewarding answers to bad questions if we want to stop bad questions.

Many bad questions on this site get good or mediocre answers from well-meaning (and/or repwhoring) users. The people asking the questions go away happy: they have their answers, even if their questions are closed or downvoted into oblivion.

To stop the bad behavior, we have to stop encouraging the bad behavior. We need to stop answering bad questions, and we need to downvote the answers to bad questions. The downvote tooltip says "This answer is not useful." Answers (even correct ones) are not useful if they contribute to the demise of the site.

As you well know, I completely agree with you here. As I just commented on @devnull's A, I personally think no rep should be awarded to closed questions. By all means, leave them there ... just roll back any reputation. 5 people with significant reputation decided the question had no value and closed it. Take away the reward for bad behavior and see what happens.
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Brian RoachApr 28 '14 at 15:05

23

@BrianRoach: Sounds like a great idea. Did you ever submit this as a feature request in meta? Possibly amend or extend it to: "roll back any reputation gained from a closed or negatively voted question".
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Denis de BernardyApr 28 '14 at 15:58

2

@Denis And the post would immediately be flooded with downvotes.
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devnullApr 28 '14 at 15:58

4

@devnull: I certainly wouldn't get a down vote from my end. And it doesn't really matter, does it? It's meta.
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Denis de BernardyApr 28 '14 at 15:59

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@Denis I actually just came up with the idea :-D But I agree it would get downvoted into oblivion. We might hurt someone's feelings by taking away their imaginary internet points. Don't get me wrong, there's some edge cases where this really might not be perfect but personally I feel we're well past the point of worrying about edge cases.
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Brian RoachApr 28 '14 at 16:14

2

@denis Well, I might be wrong about the downvoting, but I'm pretty sure I'm right about the "Won't do it because we might hurt feelings" ... linked from that is the same suggestion 4 years agometa.stackexchange.com/questions/37466/… and that even proposes incentivizing finding dups which is also a good idea (possibly even better ... less stick more carrot, etc)
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Brian RoachApr 28 '14 at 16:24

5

Does answering these bad questions really hurt the community though? I think slamming newbies for bad questions is what hurts SO. Bad ?s still are generating traffic and it really comes down to the user search when it comes to querying what you are looking for.
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yardpenaltyApr 29 '14 at 5:29

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I think you're right, but the way SO is currently gamified creates incentives to do the opposite. Consider a person like me. As you can guess, I'm quite new to SO. I actually read it for years without participating because I found it too strange. (I could edit comments, but not make my own? What?) When I did decide to start participating, I found ridiculous limitations like my inability to post a screenshot to support a question. So what did I do? I answered questions -- any questions -- in a desperate bid to gain rep just so I could use the basic features of the site.
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Kevin KrumwiedeApr 29 '14 at 6:59

6

In addition to getting regular amounts of rep for answering bad or duplicate questions, the Reversal badge creates additional incentive to reward these questions with an answer...
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itsjeydApr 29 '14 at 7:37

It would be nice if there were a few filters we could optionally apply, disabled by defauly: 1) don't show me questions from people who've been around less then n day; 2)don't show me questions with a score of < n; 3)don't show me questions from people with a reputation of < n. That way, you can answer poorly received questions from new users with a bad score if you want to earn some points, or you can instead choose to surf/search for only quality ones you might actually learn something from.
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AlexApr 30 '14 at 21:05

13

For people that toss around words like repwhoring and imaginary internet points you guys seem strangely obsessed with not awarding rep for certain classes of questions. I agree with @yardpenalty not answering questions hurts SO, slamming newbies hurts SO, being flippant hurts SO. You improve curation you don't try to discourage people from asking questions that absolutely defeats the purpose of this site.
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nsfyn55Apr 30 '14 at 23:58

5

@CullenJ On a tutorial site or a discussion forum that behavior would be altruistic and worthy of reward. Within the context of SO, however, the behavior is the opposite of what is desired. The answer is likely to help only the OP, because we depends on good searchability to allow future visitors to find useful question/answer pairs. StackOverflow's usefulness to the larger community requires both sides of the equation : good answers and good questions.
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George CumminsMay 2 '14 at 19:05

3

@GeorgeCummins That makes sense to me; I'm just wondering if we should look at it as an opportunity to turn a bad poster into a good (or at least slightly more informed/experienced) poster. Although I suppose whether they'll actually learn from one such experience is debatable.
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CullenJMay 2 '14 at 19:12

In my view, SO made the jump and became the zero-cost version of Mechanical Turk aeons ago. I stopped visiting the site twice in disgust, and more than a day passes of late where I wonder why I'm still around, so I suppose you can say my reaction is retreating from the stench.

Fwiw, I made a modest feature request a long while back — namely, please show the rep of the original asker on the questions list — in the hopes that I (and assuredly others if this thread or a few other recentthreads are anything to go by) can discriminate between sewage I've no desire to read and questions I might be interested in. (The reaction I got was discouraging, to put it mildly.)

I think it speaks mountains about the mood on the site. The site's owners should probably take note, but I doubt they will because traffic is king, quality and community be damned.

To be honest, my very personal wish still is to be able to coexist with the sewage. If I were able to know if a question is asked by a low-rep user instead of whichever random high-rep editor fixed his or her post, I'd be happy enough, not click, and move on, while leaving the sewage to whichever rep-whore is willing to deal with it.

What I'm left with instead is, basically, no reasonable vote-to-close option (I'd like the "demonstrate some minimal understanding of the problem" close reason back), and an invitation by the powers that be to simply down-vote the awful. And boy, do I down vote. It's almost the only thing I do of late — often times after barely reading the hideous wall of spaghetti before me. Whether it'll be useful in the long run is another question entirely — I for one do not think it will be enough.

Editing to add, seeing two of the comments from below… There seems to be a question ban that doesn't fire early or often enough. If that is the problem according how about adding some kind of "This low quality content is not welcome on Stack Overflow" flag?

Good grief, man: if you see a horrible mess of a question, vote to close as "unclear". That misguided off-topic reason was being abused by idiots who thought it meant they had to get rid of questions from years back that were holding up a huge pile of duplicates - that wasn't just bad for folks with the same problem, it was actively counter-productive to slowing the flood of new, crappy questions. Y'all never needed an excuse to close crap - the problem is that there's more crap than there are folks who can close it.
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Shog9♦Apr 28 '14 at 17:01

8

@Shog9: it's all I do of late. More often than not without bothering to read a question in full. But as I write in the last paragraph, I do not think it'll be enough to keep the dam from cracking.
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Denis de BernardyApr 28 '14 at 17:02

7

Before someone jumps in with "It used to cost rep to downvote a Q and when that changed is when it started to go down" ... sure, that explains the initial drop. It does not, however, explain the continued decline nor the cliff off which we've plunged since the start of this year.
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Brian RoachApr 28 '14 at 17:08

68

@Shog9: what's currently missing is a clear-cut, polite (or not so polite) close reason along the lines "Please learn to code, read the docs, google your problem, and then come back asking questions".
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Denis de BernardyApr 28 '14 at 17:18

10

Because that shouldn't be a close reason, @Denis. Close reasons are intended to be directed at questions not users. We do have something like that: stackoverflow.com/help/question-bans - we just need it to kick in sooner.
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Shog9♦Apr 28 '14 at 17:21

5

@Shog9: Seems like a trivial fix to me: add a "User is a n00b and should get question-banned" flag… (or whatever polite variation thereof mods can think of). :-)
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Denis de BernardyApr 28 '14 at 17:25

5

Any pervasive, systemic problem for which the solution is "have the moderators handle it" will inevitably continue to be a pervasive, systemic problem. There is no reasonable number of moderators who could conceivably handle a problem this size - anything short of leveraging the entire population of downvoters on Stack Overflow is destined to be too little, too late.
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Shog9♦Apr 28 '14 at 17:31

10

@Shog9 I disagree with you first comment in this thread. Crappy questions cannot be gotten rid of easily because there are very few folks willing to close those. That's the reason crap continues to flourish. Make upvotes cost a bit of rep, even 1, and then things might improve.
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devnullApr 28 '14 at 17:34

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If you believe folks are asking questions because they're trying to get rep, you're being a bit naive, @devnull.
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Shog9♦Apr 28 '14 at 17:38

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if you change the graph y coordinates from the baseline value of 70% to 0% , it doesn't look so bad
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DronehingeApr 29 '14 at 3:16

8

+1 thank you very much for the first post that contains some data
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J.F. SebastianApr 29 '14 at 4:57

5

Interesting chart, I wonder what happened in early 2011 to start the trend. Would love to see more data. @Stilly.stack changing the baseline to 0 would effectively obscure what is a pretty clear trend. It wouldn't make anything better, it'd just look that way.
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mackeApr 29 '14 at 11:50

But do the downvotes actually work? I mean, every crap question still gets an answer (or 4) even when downvoted just because there's always someone willing to help the retard that seemingly hasn't discovered google yet ... which means the questions don't get deleted automatically, right?
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SvenT23Apr 30 '14 at 9:48

4

I have very much noticed lately; as a professional programmer, if you ask a question that you couldn't reasonable solve by 30 mins on google, i.e. something hard; you get no responses. So basically it's dead for anything other than "how do I do x in jQuery".
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KongMay 8 '14 at 7:45

I tend to search for answers before asking and for years have found the answer I needed and never created an account. About a month ago I was struggling with a particularly ugly problem and happened to find the perfect detailed answer. I wanted to upvote the answer, but was informed I needed an account. So I created an account and then found out I needed 15 rep points. Tried to leave a comment - needed 50 rep points.

So I've kept it in the back of my mind to eventually go back once I have points. I looked into getting points by answering questions, but any that I know the answer to are either already answered or dross - or both.

Then I figured I'd just ask questions as they came up, but yet again, the answer is usually found as I'm writing up the question. I had one good one - but then realized it was better in the software's forum. Finally, just yesterday I had my first question - and it's more of a "given my unique setup that eliminates these obvious options, what do you suggest?" Which feels vaguely off topic. It hasn't been downvoted and I have some great suggestions now...but doesn't seem particularly useful to others.

I guess my point is that it's HARD to enter this community. I understand why, the idiotic questions are painful to read and the only appropriate response is "learn how to program". However, the current setup also precludes new members joining. I'm not a guru by any stretch, so my ability to answer good questions is limited. And given I follow the general rule of "research first", most of my questions are answered without needing to ask.

So, I'm left with a piddly reputation that allows for nothing. Understandable - but annoying none the same. Ah - but I CAN bug you with every droll question that pops into my head and also answer these stupid questions. THAT will get me rep easily and quickly.

You see the problem? It's extremely hard for a somewhat legit person to enter the site...but relatively easy for others willing to lower themselves to asking and answering stupid questions.

In some sense this is true, another upvote and I'll be able to do the same; another 7 and I can comment. Then again it's taken me a month to find a suitable question - that happened to get 2 upvotes. So, at a rate of one upvote every 2 weeks I'm looking at being able to upvote myself in May and being able to comment in August. Now obviously this isn't taking into account other factors (a good answer tomorrow might put me over the top rather quickly). But it still points out a rather real temptation to answer stupid/easy questions because I might get the rep I need to do X.
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LadyCygnusApr 30 '14 at 17:55

7

For me personally - I won't care much about rep once I get the ability to upvote that original great answer...HOWEVER - I'm sure there are others who want the ability to do some other high rep action, or who are just competitive, who will take the easy road.
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LadyCygnusApr 30 '14 at 18:00

1

@Tomalak - disagree. That's how it USED to be. The ability to accrue righteous rep is inverse to the activity of the feckless mob.
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SmandoliApr 30 '14 at 21:34

9

LadyCygnus gives a good analysis of how the dynamics have changed. There's still opportunity to shine, but it is diluted. @Neolisk, your point is encouraging; but like Tomalak, you are minimizing this deleterious shift -- which is very real, and which is the point of the OP.
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SmandoliMay 1 '14 at 2:10

2

@Smandoli It's been a very long time since I was a low rep user. Almost six years. Of course I don't know how it "feels" like these days. All I can state is: the intent behind the hurdles, the point that they seem to work pretty well in this regard and the point that it still takes no effort for me to make somewhere between 50 and 100 points a day with fresh answers, if I really try to (not bragging, just pointing out that it is possible to overcome the tiny hurdles that guard immediate site interaction from newly registered users).
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TomalakMay 1 '14 at 6:04

4

another thought...I'm not a guru. Although I'm really good at what I do, it typically doesn't involve a deep level of knowledge. As an example, although I've used Perl for 10 years 70% of what I've done has been file IO and regex. I might come up with a decent question or two, but I doubt I'll ever answer a good question. It's hard for a mid-level to get started. We care about keeping this site useful and our own Rep (not rep).
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LadyCygnusMay 1 '14 at 14:32

14

Wouldn't this site want mid-level users who are actively trying to solve problems to post good questions to challenge the high-level users? Yet it seems like this is the group that find it hardest to get started. I have no problem being a lurker getting the random question answered - all this is observation since the question was asked. Note - I might be missing something being new.
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LadyCygnusMay 1 '14 at 14:40

1

@LadyCygnus: I completely agree. Although I would love to contribute answers, I am not experienced enough as a developer to answer the complex questions that the experienced Stack Overflow users might consider valuable. Moreover, several of my own questions have arisen not because I have not done my research but because the resources I have found are either too simple or too complex for my current level of understanding. Even though certain questions may seem irrelevant or trivial to a guru, their presence is what makes Stack Overflow valuable to me at this point in my career.
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JimmyTheOneMay 2 '14 at 6:43

4

You seem to assume that I think a mid-level or beginner question is a bad question. I don't. Question quality is not linked to the level of experience. StackOverflow is designed to attract people with a certain mindset, not with a certain minimum of experience. Unfortunately it seems to attract more and more people with a bad mindset lately, so there some correction must be made to the design.
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TomalakMay 2 '14 at 7:37

1

@LadyCygnus: you don't, which can be seen as unfortunate since it means answering duplicates allows gathering reputation but cleaning them up does not. Of course, on the other hand, people who answered and got upvoted did make an effort so not rewarding them seems harsh.
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Matthieu M.May 7 '14 at 15:44

3

This is a good answer and it kinda gets at the natural progression of the site: all the obvious, important questions for domains that have been available for years have already been asked.
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AndrewSMay 7 '14 at 16:03

12

One statement in defense of the stupid questions is that the search facilities here really suck. I can search for a question I know I answered, using my ID as one of the search arguments, and not be able to find it many times. And in general, when I'm looking for a "previous answer" that I know I've seen recently I can only find it maybe 30% of the time. Google does better searching SO than does SO's own search "tool".
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Hot LicksMay 8 '14 at 0:42

3

I agree that there is an incentive for new users to ask and answer crap questions. There is also a perverse incentive for the rep junkies to answer stupid questions. We need to fix the rep system so its less of a game to see who gets the highest rep and have people sit at a general level (up and down as they improve/dis improve).
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Tim RingMay 8 '14 at 11:36

2

@LadyCygnus Bravo! I'm also "relatively" new to SO, but since I don't use innovative framworks or experimental languages, most questions and answers are already there... so, if I want rep, I'll answer stupid questions for an accepted tick or an upvote. Gurus can keep getting their 200 rep per day, newbies don't stand a chance. Unless they game the system and therefore quality plummets. I am ashamaed of one of my answers as a Stundent of Computer Sciences but dare not delete because it represents half my reputation. :(
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DarenMay 8 '14 at 14:14

2

@HotLicks charging for up-votes would greatly reduce the number of upvotes given. They would only be given for the really awesome posts; less so for the good; even less so for the OK. It seems this would cause users like me to be even less likely to get an upvote (since I doubt I'll ever write an awesome answer). It may have the effect of causing stupid questions to not be answered - but it seems it will also cause more of a divide in the users (great users gets votes - mediocre ones fall of the bottom - bad ones still post and run).
–
LadyCygnusMay 9 '14 at 14:12

Self-Filtering By Requiring a User-Name On New Accounts

One possible aid: Force each new user to create a user name rather than provide one for them.

The worst questions are asked by new users with default user-name of userNNNNNN. That suggests to me these folks are "drive-by" users looking for a quick answer without any willingness to put in the effort described in this Question.

Seriously, I suspect making the sign-up process require even the slightest bit more of a commitment would significantly improve the quality of new users and questions.

Why fool around with usernames? Make them enter a 42-digit prime number in order to complete the sign-up process. Huh?
–
devnullApr 29 '14 at 6:56

14

@devnull Ironic comment, coming from a person who bothered to devise such a clever and creative username.
–
Basil BourqueApr 29 '14 at 6:59

13

I actually agree with you here. A vast majority of the terrible questions I see every day come from exactly these people, who appear to have picked up the framework (Spring Framework / Hibernate) with no idea how its actually supposed to work, and then dump their highly offensive code all over the front page and expect people to fix their problems for them
–
JamesApr 29 '14 at 8:25

67

"Raise the barrier of entry a tiny bit" is a very good suggestion. I had a professor in university who was in charge of the mandatory 2nd semester group programming course who made a short, written java test a requirement for attending the course. This was justified as neccessary for evaluating the knowledge level of the students, to be able to better separate them into groups. He admitted later on that the test was mostly to filter out people who had no real interest in programming, as about a third of the students who signed up for the course didn't even show up to the test...
–
l4mpiApr 29 '14 at 10:09

12

@l4mpi Exactly. I'm not suggesting actively filtering new users but rather self-filtering by requiring some bit of effort on their part. Requiring them to invent and type a user-name is a good first step. The equivalent of my suggestion for that teacher would be requiring potential students to submit the bit of Java code but never bothering to look at the submissions. Merely making the submission is enough to self-filter out the utterly uncommitted persons.
–
Basil BourqueApr 29 '14 at 14:52

5

I respectfully disagree. It would have made zero difference to me. I looked at SO many years ago, and mostly ignored it simply because it seemed too academic for my needs, where I had primary interest in solving business problems through automated processes. I've returned to SO in the past couple months due to finding a problem related to this thread in other similar forums. This time, I joined; and the "username" was completely irrelevant. After 40+ years as a programmer, I doubt I could care less; and I suspect that others with similar background would mostly feel the same.
–
user2338816Apr 30 '14 at 10:36

9

@user2338816: I don't think that Basil suggests that this will be a perfect filter. However a simple filter that reduces the problem significantly is a good idea I think. And the fact that it would have made zero difference to you is actually good - it's a sign that it wouldn't be a significant barrier to people who would be an asset to SO (unless you're saying you only post low quality questions).
–
Michael BurrApr 30 '14 at 15:24

1

What would stop people from creating user names like ";faiohjdlakjfadlkh"?
–
ThisSuitIsBlackNotApr 30 '14 at 17:04

3

@ThisSuitIsBlackNot Nothing would stop a person from creating a user name like ";faiohjdlakjfadlkh". And how would that be any worse than "user5929393"? Even even a minority of "drive-by" users are deterred this minimal effort, then job done.
–
Basil BourqueApr 30 '14 at 20:41

6

I didn't say it was worse. My point is, the amount of effort required to create a user name is the same as the amount of effort to bash on your keyboard randomly with a stick. Which is only slightly less than the amount of effort required to compose the crap questions you're trying to eliminate with your proposal. I don't see a user name requirement changing anything...the hurdle is just too low.
–
ThisSuitIsBlackNotApr 30 '14 at 21:15

3

@ThisSuitIsBlackNot I never said my suggestion is a panacea. If it helps at all, it helps. I still wear my rain jacket even if I forgot to bring my rain hat. The point is that user-naming is one low hurdle that puts no stress/workload on a serious user while possibly keeping out some of the least serious people. Besides that, my suggestion was truly meant to stimulate similar ideas on how to raise the quality without burdening the well-intentioned and without becoming elitist.
–
Basil BourqueMay 1 '14 at 1:16

2

New users are already required to register before asking a question. They are then presented with the "How to Ask" page and have to scroll to the bottom, check a box saying they read it, and click "Proceed". Considering that the "drive-by" users you mention already do all of this, I seriously doubt making them choose a user name would discourage them.
–
ThisSuitIsBlackNotMay 1 '14 at 14:13

1

What @BasilBourque is saying is the sign up process is too automated at present and requires very little effort. If the sign in process required you to fill in a few mandatory fields (including username), then this would act as a deterrent to those who can't seem to be bothered to string a simple sentence together when asking questions.
–
LankymartMay 10 '14 at 11:02

Yeah, every third 15-year-old in the world pictures himself as an ace programmer, just days away from creating the next great viral app. But those a-holes at SO won't answer his questions (at least not rapidly enough), and he resents that SO is holding him back like that.
–
Hot LicksMay 8 '14 at 0:44

An excellent reference point here is the Unity3D forum (at answers.unity3d.com)

(I am or was a top ten member.)

Unity is very important commercially as it is now the main game platform, and the "answers" site used to be fantastic -- and indeed, very important commercially. Since, like many companies, Unity's stance was "oh, uh, we offer utterly no support because ....... we offer a Forum!" (Fair enough, it's a commercial decision.)

The site is now just riddled with the lowest possible quality questions.

If you're an SO user, and you're concerned about the "future of SO", I encourage you to just click on that link to, well, see the "future of SO" (as sad as that sounds).

Even if you're not a game engine programmer, or involved in software, just click on the link, and click "newest questions" to see the recent flow. Again even if you not a software engineer, you will immediately perceive the really, really notably low, remarkably low, quality of the fluffflood of questions.

For a few years there, many mods would scream "Just delete bad and duplicate questions"...

but nobody did it.

(And then ... who knows if it would make any difference if mods had done so?)

and many other meta discussions there: long-time top mods just giving up, etc etc.

Indeed, if you bother to read through or glance through some of that material, it is a case study of a forum going to the dogs.

(I have no idea if this is, or is not, happening to SO, of if the "mechanisms of failure" are the same. I offer it as a fascinating reference point; an example of a once popular and excellent QA site which has gone to hell.)

Notice on that site ...... sundry proposals made by desperate keen users, as the site was slowly going to hell.

(It's actually really - you could use the words "quite sad" - to see the decay from vibrant members desperately suggesting something, to, eventually, people saying (I quote) "fuck this" and leaving, to eventually people simply not showing up.)

Fascinating tidbit:

If I'm not mistaken, due to the insane popularity of Unity3D, that site is (I'd guess) the largest example of "A QA forum gone to hell."

Notice the overwhelmed Unity staff members (who consistently tried to do the best job possible before the Fall) - it's possible, people here on SO probing in to the whole issue, may wish to ask them questions, or whatever.

It's worth noting that the Unity site "is now dead, functionally" means: hence, if I post a serious advanced question, quite simply, nobody sees it. The flood of "ridiculously low quality" questions is overwhelming. So the site is not usable, not functioning, you can not get "answers" there.

(It costs something like US$2000 a year to be a professional Unity user; as a curiosity, it's actually commercially significant that the forum is now deadfluff.)

An interesting phenomenon: (I don't know if there's some equivalent here on SO). For awhile at the beginning of "the fall". More serious users would sort of PM each other "there's an interesting question here" regarding worthwhile questions. However I'd say this has just been abandoned; most people have given up and the fluffflow is just totally overwhelming.

Note that Unity3D, as a topic, in inherently "dangerous territory for fluffflow." The whole idea of Unity3D (if you're not a software engineer) is that it makes the very difficult, quite easy. Amazingly, you get brand-new programmers trying to learn programming, I mean from day 1, with a 3D rendering physics game engine ("!!"), which is kind of a recipe for disaster in terms of the QA site aspect. So, that issue tends to make the "answers.unity3d collapse" more of an extreme example; perhaps you don't suffer that so much on SO, I don't know.

{I think - I'm not an expert - the sort of moral equivalent on SO is "fuckers asking homework questions". As far as I can see on SO, those of you who "actually care", a pretty annoying issue is the FHAHQ issue. I guess a similar thing on answers.unity3d was "absolute beginner programming questions unrelated to Unity as such." Anyway, it might help with the thinking here.}

My personal takeaway from the whole affair?

Social solutions will not work.

Sad but true. If someone on the meta discussion realises "Hey, we mods must _ _ _ to solve the problem!"

The simple reality is: it Will Not Happen.

The ONLY solutions are technical solutions. i.e., all new questions are simply plain deleted after 2 hours unless 4 of 20 top-ranking mods certifies the question is original and worthy ..... or whatever.

Social solutions do Not Work. Proof, click to the Unity site.

{But see my caveat below. It is simply factually the case that SO, like say any Western Government, is now an I.S.M.O. ..... an Incredibly Slow Moving Organisation. It's inconceivable that anything Radical (say - "eliminate membership," "make all pages bright pink," or whatever) will be tried. You might as well suggest a Western Democracy would try fast, aggressive solutions. So, the issue is settled. Click to the unity site to see SO's future.}

And here's a contrary example, with an equally bad outcome!...

Consider Parse.com, which is becoming wildly important in many aspects of mobile computing. They have their own QA forum. Now, the owners TIGHTLY CONTROL the forum, so there is NO crap content.

Result ... nobody likes or uses the forum. :/

It's tough ...

And for a complete scientific analysis, with diagram...

Amazingly, this question actually totally explains the dynamic, which ruined the above two sites:

Regarding SO being ruined in the same way, you can simply place bets on when it happens. There is - absolutely - no cure.

(SO could aggressively try different strategies, to at least try to find a cure. Nobody knows what the cure is: you can trivially write down a list of aggressive ideas which could be aggressively actually tried. For example, it might be that you simply must vote on a post if you are even an unregistered visitor, it might be that "registration and membership" has to be completely eliminated form the SO concept, it might be that only the 3 highest ranking members on the whole site can vote on posts, it might be that ALL posts are automatically eliminated after 36 hours unless a high ranking member approves them, it might be that you simply can't have a ranking unless you use an RSS tool to constantly monitor posts, it might be that you must eliminate 10 weak posts a day to have a score over 5k -- etc etc -- it's easy to think of aggressive ideas. But - simple fact - SO is now an incredibly slow moving organisation; nothing like this is going to be tried. It's just that simple. [There would be a huge bizarre panic by owners and 'constituents' at any aggressive ideas, like eliminating posts, blocking users, adding an "advanced" section or whatever.] It's simply a fantasy to believe anything aggressive will be tried -- you might as well hope for a modern Western democracy to try radical aggressive ideas on problems. So it's not going to happen. You can count the days until SO meets the same fate as the above two examples.)

answers.unity looks a lot like a Stack Exchange instance, is it actually based off of the Stack Exchange platform, or is it only a cosmetic similarity? Also, would it really be so bad for Stack Overflow if so many people stopped asking questions on it? It's the good questions that matter, not the junk ones.
–
CupcakeMay 3 '14 at 14:14

2

Hi Bart - no, tragically, on the contrary. There was years of intense discussion and desperate debate on the Unity site, about how to "save" it. Eg You can see literally years of discussion on it here, answers.unity3d.com/questions/432710/… SO is now at precisely the place Unity was a couple yrs ago, with many vibrant Meta discussions about how to save it. Anyway - I leave it to you.
–
Joe BlowMay 4 '14 at 11:02

13

someone has already said this but if the community wants a "not enough effort" close reason why doesn't SE implement it?
–
MeehowMay 6 '14 at 16:05

1

HI meHow - the answer to your question is simple: SO has become a mature, slow-moving organisation. Just like a Western government. It's impossible to see them ever now "quickly changing" something to "have a go" and "see what happens" - it will never happen.
–
Joe BlowMay 6 '14 at 16:15

10

Every single thing discussed here in this Question, it's Answers, and the many many Comments is old-hat. Every problem raised here has come up before in the mid-80s in relation to Usenet Newsgroups; any type of forum that gains a reputation as being useful is doomed to an eventual death-by-newbie. Unless all of the bad, duplicate, and do-my-work-for-me questions can be ruthlessly eliminated, there is no hope for any site, forum, or "bboard" — it will eventually die as the experts abandon it. AFU (alt.folklore.urban) was ruthless but was still overwhelmed by clueless newbies.
–
Stephen PMay 14 '14 at 23:09

I'm an Android developer. There are certainly a lot of stupid Android questions on here. I suspect it has a lot to do with the fact that the official Android Developers Google Group is moderated, and the moderators have been asleep at the keys for at least a year, meaning that no new members can post. Worse, their group description specifically recommends people come here to ask basic questions:

If you're just starting with Android application development and have a beginner-level question, consider asking it on Stack Overflow.

Yes, folks... companies as mighty as Google are actually crowdsourcing their tech support to Stack Overflow!

developer.android.com has all that is basically needed to start programming for android, at least if you know programming before. That should be enough for starters. It is not the task of a company to run a teaching site for total newbies.
–
kapApr 29 '14 at 8:22

Google can run their business however they like, but I would think they'd want to actively support developers on their own platform. And if it's not Google's task to run a teaching site for Android, it's definitely not Stack Overflow's.
–
Kevin KrumwiedeApr 29 '14 at 16:26

1

@kap A company may not be obliged to run a teaching site for total newbies, but if they do, it's a very good thing for themselves, and shows a lot about their commitment to a platform. Microsoft runs the Microsoft Virtual Academy, which IMO qualifies as "a teaching site for total newbies". It drives more people to learn their platforms, so more people start using their technologies and they gain more presence in the industry.
–
NothingsImpossibleMay 7 '14 at 15:02

1

StackOverflow has always done a better job than the Google Groups at managing noise and duplication. Google should be applauded for admitting that. No company I know is a Jack of all trades and a Master of all. Even Microsoft, for all the things they do better than Google, had atrocious search on its own technical documentation that couldn't match Google's search of the same. As to the business of running a "teaching site", Google made a $$$ deal with StackOverflow before it made them an official Android site, but I doubt the term "teaching site" was ever used. There was already an ok one.
–
Stephan BranczykMay 8 '14 at 1:59

Too Localized

Really miss this one. But perhaps it was "too mean", and it applied to "too many bad questions".

Afterall, the mentality suddenly switched at that point from "close it and move on" to "answer it if you want, or move on" with the outlook that more answers leads to a better site.

Let's face it, the rigidity that left with Jeff Atwood needs to make a comeback. Some of the wording used which was considered too harsh is now clearly in need of helping us fight a wave of help vampires.

These users (the help vampires) expect that with a simple "how do I write facebook" question on Stack Overflow they will be able to create the next big thing. For many obvious reasons that does not work. However! As long as it meets certain minimums the question may be able to stand under current standards.

It is almost ironic that a majority of software needs are outsourced, and that many in-source experts end up solving outsourced problems on Stack Overflow.

In my opinion the closure tool is ineffective! Shocking, right? Who knew.. apparently nearly a quarter of a million users it turns out (hundreds of thousands of close votes in the review queue times a minimal 2 - probably higher).

Bring back the vague closure reasons, and close all the things. Increase vote to close weights. Impose limits on question asking for new users. Raise the gates! Board the windows! This is a call to action.

I'm glad you wrote this. On several occasions I have seen where someone with 'goal eyes' was in way over their head. They get an idea and slug EVERY few lines of code out in questions. Sequentially. I don't know if these apps finally reach the commercial stage or not, but if they do I suspect they are WORRYINGLY unstable. A localized problem solved in Stack Overflow is fine, but we're talking whole apps from womb to tomb here.
–
Gayot FowApr 29 '14 at 15:15

17

+1 for the "in-source experts and up solving outsourced problems". I've always found that irony very sad. You can set your watch by SO when a certain time zone hits 8am, and when you comment "We don't do your homework for you" the reply is that ... it isn't homework.
–
Brian RoachApr 30 '14 at 19:14

4

"It is almost ironic that a majority of software needs are outsourced, and that many in-source experts end up solving outsourced problems on Stack Overflow." - bravo
–
RubberDuckApr 30 '14 at 20:50

3

@GarryVass I've also seen far too many questions where the asker starts off with 'Continuing on from my previous questions on this piece of code...'
–
sevenseacatMay 2 '14 at 9:17

Does the questioner show that they have NOT tried to resolve this issue by themselves already? By searching SO and google , and even bing to find the answer?

The question is very poorly written, and doesn't include enough relevant information, or includes too much useless information.

Is the question very narrowly focused, and the answer wouldn't be helpful to anyone else that views the question/answer in the future?

If you answer any of those questions with a yes, don't answer it. And even vote to close the question and/or downvote if necessary.

If the question is good, but you feel the questioner won't understand the answer you give, doesn't mean you shouldn't answer the question. Since there will likely be many more people who view the question for years to come, and they will very much appreciate your answer, even if it goes beyond the questioner's abilities.

Cool. I've been applying this strategy for a few months now. That lead to my voting to close a lot of questions and answering a lot less. And you know what? This trend is increasing. I now pass 90% of my time on SO closing questions, and they keep coming. It wasn't always like this (and I'm not that old on the site anyway).
–
Frédéric HamidiApr 28 '14 at 13:13

24

I've been more selective. It's called not visiting SO. That's why your solution here is a total non-solution.
–
djechlinApr 28 '14 at 14:56

2

@FrédéricHamidi: Of course they do keep coming. SO is/was exponentially attracting more people that are new to the site and don't know what they do
–
PlasmaHHApr 28 '14 at 15:13

3

This is happening to me too.. my activity was mostly answering questions up until a few months back and I gained a lot of rep really quickly.. now I'm close-voting >90% of the time because the quality of questions is just terrible.
–
Simon WhiteheadApr 29 '14 at 3:49

2

That's what I've been doing for years, which is why my rep is low, I am usualy extremely picky. And people hold that low rep against me, "you have lower rep therefore you're no good" kind of attitude is common on this site (and other sites having rep systems).
–
jwentingApr 30 '14 at 6:53

The "caretakers" who want to keep the site clean and with good content.

The "help vampires" who flood the site with bad/duplicate questions who only want their question answered and care nothing for the site.

The "victims" who'd answer just about anything. Whether or not this is done for reputation is not particularly relevant to my answer, and yes, I realize people who answer just to help and people who do so just because they want as much reputation as possible are probably significantly different, but the effect on the site of both are similar.

The ones who no longer care.

The "good ones" who actually ask good questions.

In short, #2 and #3 are controlling the content and we need to rethink Stack Overflow's (Stack Exchange's) design if we want to stop them.

Let's assume we're in:

Camp #1 or

Camp #4, presumably previously in #1, but will happily move back into #1 or

Camp #3, after having given up on #1 realizing you'll never change it, but will happily go back or

Somewhere in between.

And maybe with a hint of #5.

By the above assumption, we don't want #2 and #3 here. But the problem is - #2 and #3 sustain each other. There's already enough of #3 on the site (with hopelessly too much rep, whom we can't exactly just ban for this) and too few #1, with a constant flow of #2 (banning them eventually is good, but that doesn't stop the questions they actually get to post, or the constant flow of new ones), such that we'll most likely never 'fix' the site.

This problem will just get worse with more #3 and #2, worse #3's, and #1 becoming #4 and both #1 and #4 leaving, or #1 becoming #3, and, with less and less left to moderate content, the site will start spiralling downwards a lot faster. Eventually #5 will leave too as they get bombarded with low quality answers or no expert left who's able to answer.

This is, IMO, a design problem. Allowing anyone to post a question to the general public and get an answer within minutes is a great idea in theory, but I think what's happening to Stack Overflow shows the problem with it.

A few specific suggestions from my side: (or "let's put all my radical ideas in one place")

We need to:

Put questions (and possibly answers) (at least those by low-reputation users, e.g. < 1k rep, or possibly even more) into a review queue before getting seen by the general public.

Err on the side of closing questions we don't think will be useful.

With regard to not having appropriate close reasons, we should have a constant dialogue with regard to the close reasons and what should or shouldn't be added or removed, and Stack Exchange needs to err on the side of listening to the community on this one.

Punish (recently asked) closed questions.

If reputation is a measure of how much the community trusts you, shouldn't we remove reputation from users who don't know what's appropriate? I personally don't trust someone with the site who doesn't follow the guidelines. Downvoting isn't sufficient here, as often users don't downvote decent, but wildly off topic, questions (unless we start downvoting these more).

Raise the standards of what's acceptable.

For one thing, close and downvote "debug my code for me" and questions about an error without a complete, minimal example (even if the problem is in the shown code - broken window theory and all that, and it should be minimal - anyone posting their program without a sufficient attempt at removing code not applicable to question should have their question closed).

Perhaps more arguable, questions showing no research effort need to be closed and/or heavily downvoted, even if they are otherwise useful - broken window theory and all that. I like the idea of keeping useful ones on the site and not allowing OP to see them, or at least making it more of a hassle for them, in some way or another, but my attempt at suggesting that was shot down fairly conclusively.

Detect and punish bad reviewing more and better.

It's no use we make Stack Overflow more review-centric if we have a bunch of robo-reviewers just approving everything.

On the flip side, we could (and maybe should) also reward good reviewing. Finding and/or checking duplicates properly is a lot of work, and not many people do currently. If we put new questions into a review queue, and get rid of robo-reviewers, we may need to reward reviewing to deal with the numbers.

Make registering take longer / more effort.

Presumably the lazy people will be less inclined to create an account here if they have a few hoops to jump through before they can do so.

We may even consider including a short what's-on-topic introduction, including having them review a few selected posts correctly to ensure they get it.

Focus more on closing duplicates and making canonical posts of which we can close things as duplicate of.

Duplication is bad, duplication is bad, duplication is bad, duplication is bad, duplication is bad, duplication is bad, duplication is bad, duplication is bad, duplication is bad, duplication is bad, duplication is bad, duplication is bad, duplication is bad, duplication is bad, duplication is bad.

Although having different explanations of the same thing isn't necessarily duplication (although these should be on a single page). Nor is different ways to find the same information (i.e. closed duplicate questions as signposts, although I think this deserves some reviewing).

Having dozens, hundreds or even thousands or more posts running about asking minor variations of pretty much the same thing is bad.

You left out the camp of people who enjoy helping others and don't care too much about rep (or is that part of #5 for you?).
–
TomalakApr 29 '14 at 10:51

2

Hm, that does not help me much in positioning myself.
–
TomalakApr 29 '14 at 10:56

11

"Raise the standards of what's acceptable" - a thousand times this. Too many people interpreted "be nicer to noobs" as "a new user wrote something that's not blatantly offensive, thus he must be upvoted"; regardless of the actual quality of the post. But fear not, if all is lost for SO we can still start an area51 proposal for a NoSuckOverflow where RTFM is an actual close reason...
–
l4mpiApr 29 '14 at 11:20

10

I like the idea of rewarding people who find duplicates. With the proper incentive, that might be one direction where "rep whoring" might actually do something useful. It's a fine line though, and a hard-to-hit one. (I've seen it myself: Digging up the proper duplicate & proposing it costs time and earns no reward, even more so as several people have to agree on the vote, i.e. the question must have enough screen time for this to happen, and in the mean time somebody writes down the obvious answer, gets accepted and the line moves on.)
–
TomalakApr 29 '14 at 13:50

2

Considering those "with hopelessly too much rep", it implies that 'rep' is not a very useful metric for anyone. Is it known when that became true?
–
user2338816Apr 30 '14 at 11:18

A lot of the reasons (that no one seems to be talking about) is that a lot of the good questions have been asked already. Remember that the great question you asked/answered a while back. Well, now it'll never be asked again (if it is, it will be closed as duplicate).

Have you ever had a good question, then googled it and seen that it was answered a few years back. This is fine, and this is what Stack Overflow was meant to do. It's just now a lot of it has been done.

Also note that on the newer Stack Exchange sites, there are great new questions (hot network questions always has something that interests me). That's because they are new, so new questions have not been asked already.

To show this, I looked at your top questions, and they are from 2008 - 2010. I find it unlikely that you have gotten worse at asking questions, so I can only assume that the good questions you've had have been asked by you in the past or other people in the past.

A) There will always be new frameworks, languages, techniques, applications to ask questions about. It's impossible to have all thinkable questions handled. B) You'll see an enormous skew towards answers in my account. I'm asking a question only if I'm really, really stuck with something, and that happens very rarely. For the smaller part because I have a bit of experience, for the larger part because I have the determination to find out myself. I'd rather read the RFC and the language spec than ask a question. I'd rather search and try for 5 days than ask a question.
–
TomalakApr 29 '14 at 10:35

1

@Tomalak A) true, i'm not saying that good questions will ever completely dry up, just that in general there are now fewer good questions than bad questions. B) how often do you find the answer (maybe on stackoverflow) and not need to ask a question, this agrees with my point.
–
puserApr 29 '14 at 10:41

2

Quite often, actually. I agree that someone has to ask these questions (even simple ones, because "simple" is not correlated to "bad"). What I'm missing of late is the determination to self-improve. It seems to be epidemic in the industry, if you look at the top answer in this thread.
–
TomalakApr 29 '14 at 10:44

2

@Tomalak I'm sure that lack of self-improvement has always been the case, its just stackoverflow wasn't mainstream enough so only 'die hards' used the site. so now before there was die hards with good questions, now there are die hards without good questions (already been asked) and other people with worse questions. Though if those worse questions weren't asked, stackoverflow would be pretty inactive.
–
puserApr 29 '14 at 10:48

3

I don't know why this answer was downvoted or why this answer wasn't given to the why-is-stack-overflow-so-negative-of-late thread. Of course there are new technologies but the bulk of low quality questions are about the existing technologies about which most things have been answered, so naturally there are fewer good quality questions on those subjects. Yes there are SO mechanics that need refining, but the overall reason for both these threads is simply that the good users cannot ask many more good quality questions leaving lower experience users to dominate with asking poorer questions.
–
guymidApr 30 '14 at 7:11

1

As another user with rep in the low hundreds, this represents my perspective as well.
–
NoumenonApr 30 '14 at 14:51

4

I think people are missing puser's point: within a given language or framework, questions will inevitably start as broadly good, then gradually the "easy" questions will stop as they get answered, leaving only the esoteric and the poor-quality. Yes, a new language or framework will start the process over again.
–
egruninMay 5 '14 at 22:03

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I want to remind everybody that SO quite recently decided to abandon "Not enough effort shown" reason for closing questions. We had quite an active discussion about it.

As it stands now people can ask questions without doing any research first. Nothing stops them and community does not want to shut down such questions. I would venture a guess (without any statistics to support it) that the problem is not that more low quality questions are posted than before, but that they have much longer life span.

Downvoting post from users without any earned reputation serves just for letting frustration out, nothing else. Pure homework dumps are protected by the rules and, therefore, have a chance to attract someones attention and become quite legitimate.

There is an argument that sometimes bad question get good answers and that's what SO is all about: to be the repository of good peer-reviewed answers. Future knowledge seekers will find these bits of useful information and would't care what actually prompted them.

Be as it may, bad questions still lower the plank and bring whatever standards we have down.

I'm sure it's been thought of before, but what about a short period of time (say 15 minutes) where any question asked by a new or low-rep user goes into "limbo" where people with more experience than the asker can flag it as a duplicate (if needs be), block it from being posted (until the asker clarifies it, or another user edits it to be clearer) and so on. This removes the instant satisfaction of getting an answer for your problem without first checking to see if it's been solved and/or taking the time to write a clear question.

The question might be available to answers in that time, but if a user-who-should-know-better (i.e. with high rep) chooses to answer it without checking for problems (dupes especially), then they would gain no reputation for their answer.

The limbo idea is interesting. How to automate no rep for answers "without checking for problems" seems tricky.
–
AShellyApr 29 '14 at 12:42

3

Or taking the limbo idea a step further. Simply start all questions as closed and don't open them for answering until enough people vote to agree that it is a good question.
–
Martin SmithApr 30 '14 at 15:23

3

@MartinSmith unfortunately, while that would indeed be effective at deterring bad questions in popular tags, it would also catch perfectly good questions about niche technologies in the crossfire. I prefer nevan's approach.
–
Mark AmeryApr 30 '14 at 21:36

Today, I tried signing up as a new user, using a different e-mail
address than I normally use, to see what comes up and try to look at
it through the eyes of a real first-time user. How they find out
about Stack Overflow, I don't know. Maybe they've already tried
Googling for answers to other questions, and they notice that Stack
Overflow questions come up a lot. Maybe they hear about it from
friends. Maybe they are students and their professors are telling
them that this is where they should go for help, instead of bugging
the professors. (If that last is the case, it definitely seems like a
problem, but how to squelch that is a subject for another discussion.)

So they decide they want to ask a question, and they sign up. The
first page they see is the "About - Stack Overflow" page. Here's what
they see:

Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for professional and
enthusiast programmers. It's built and run by you as part of the
Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working
together to build a library of detailed answers to every question
about programming.
This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion
forum. There's no chit-chat.
Just questions... and answers.

Great! They've got a question, and they'd like an answer. So this
seems like the right place.

Not all questions work well in our format. Avoid questions that
are primarily opinion-based, or that are likely to generate
discussion rather than answers.

Still OK. They can't get their code to work. They need a fix, not an
opinion.

The first item here really ought to dissuade those who just want to
copy-and-paste their homework assignments into the question box. Other
than that, though, askers who would ask questions that a lot of us
consider "low-quality" haven't seen any reason to be dissuaded.

So then there's the second page.

We'd love to help you, but the reality is that not every question
gets answered. To improve your chances, here are some tips:

This sends the message that these aren't "rules" or even "guidelines",
but rather "tips on improving one's chances". And the information
they really need to know isn't on this page; they have to follow a
link that says "Our community is defined by a specific set of topics
in the help center". Sounds a bit like legalese; and on a page that
is claiming just to give you "tips" to "improve your chances" of
getting a question answered, I can understand why someone might not
see the need to follow this link and read it carefully.

If there really is a problem with question quality, then I think the
site needs to make it clear, up front, what kinds of questions are
acceptable. The "About" page needs to be less inviting, and clearer
about what SO's mission is and what kinds of questions it's for and
isn't for. The rules for what are considered "good" questions should
be presented as such, even if they're not absolute hard-and-fast
rules, but they should not be presented as mere "tips to improve your
chances". Things like "Questions asking us to recommend or find a
tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic" should be
presented here, and should be one of the things users need to read
first, rather than be on a separate page that they get to via a link
that the site doesn't make it clear they need to follow. If questions
must be relevant to other people besides the poster, that needs to be
clear up front. And if questions from people who are new to
programming and who don't fundamentally understand it yet aren't
welcome here, that should be made clear up front, too (politely).
There should be something in bold letters that says that pasting in
your homework assignment without showing any effort of your own is
unacceptable.

Starting off with a long-ish list of rules may seem less friendly, but
to my mind it's far superior to let people know right away what the
purpose of the site is and what's expected of them, than to make it
look like their participation is welcome and then slap them. The
latter is what makes SO look negative, or, to quote someone from a
different forum, "intimidating and arrogant". I do think that if we
start by making the rules clear, then we should try to downvote or
close only questions that clearly break the rules, and give leeway in
less-clear cases (and keep in mind that when we expect them to do some
research before asking, others may not have as good an idea as we do
how to go about that).

+1 It is a great idea to "impersonate" a new SO user like you did! However, you imporsonated one that is interested in what SO has to say before you ask your question. This is a biased assumption. A user that has a goal in mind can ignore a whole lot of text that they did not ask for (think the many "are you sure" dialogs that are simply clicked away before the user read the prompt properly). These intermediate steps get into their flow. They have a question in mind and want to write it down as quickly as possible. Most of them won't read more than the first few sentences of the "About".
–
chiccodoroAug 5 '14 at 10:43

There are multiple reasons to this. I'd say that some questions would always be of low (poor) quality. It depends on the users what they do (or attempt to do) in order to improve the quality. However, neither of the following helps:

Jumping to answer questions that have been answered scores of times.

Refusing to VTC obvious duplicates (regardless of the quality of the question). Often you'd find several users answering a FAQ who have the privilege to VTC.

Defending a poorly written, vague, and incomprehensible question. Choosing to answer by saying: it seems that you want such and such so ... Unfortunately, even extremely high rep users tend to do that.

It boils down to internet dollars. We are responsible for the deteriorating quality and only we can help improve it.

The fate of an answer that proposed no rep for answering duplicates does demonstrate what people want.

@FrédéricHamidi I personally think no rep should be awarded to closed questions. By all means, leave them there ... just roll back any reputation. 5 people with significant reputation decided the question had no value and closed it. Take away the reward for bad behavior and see what happens.
–
Brian RoachApr 28 '14 at 15:04

3

Of course not, the bulk of the "community" appears to be more interested in imaginary internet points than the site's quality ... hence the problem :-D
–
Brian RoachApr 28 '14 at 15:07

4

@FrédéricHamidi There is absolutely no will to close questions as duplicate. Refer to this, for instance. It has my lone vote to close as duplicate despite citing 3 different questions that answer the same thing! Rep-whores bring the quality of the site down.
–
devnullApr 28 '14 at 15:39

3

@FrédéricHamidi Yes, rep whores would not let you close a question. There are times when SO tends to suck for this reason.
–
devnullApr 28 '14 at 15:53

5

If the repwhores decide to vote to reopen just to save their points, we could find ourselves vastly outnumbered in endless close/reopen battles. Given that, perhaps Tim's approach may make the most sense: cut them off at a level where rep doesn't play a role.
–
George CumminsApr 28 '14 at 16:06

1

"Choosing to answer by saying: it seems that you want such and such so ... Unfortunately, even extremely high rep users tend to do that." - Guilty as charged, though I really try to avoid that (also in self-defense, as these kinds of questions often very quickly devolve into an interactive debugging session that takes hours to complete). Deliberately not taking the bait can be hard, occasionally.
–
TomalakApr 28 '14 at 16:17

1

@FrédéricHamidi Another recent question which was amusingly not noticed by anyone to be an obvious duplicate! And this would be +63 Holy ________.
–
devnullApr 28 '14 at 16:33

As someone who pretty much only gives answers (and comments), the only point where I'm not happy about closing a question (and thus "killing" the answers) is when it's a duplicate. The "original" might already have hundreds of points to itself, and it gets hard for even a very well written answer to beat that. Which is a shame, because quite often, those well-voted answers can be rather short and with very little explanation - answering the question (great) but not really moving the asker forward in understanding.

A clear example of a bad question is when there's 10 answers, three sentences each, in five minutes since the question has been posted.

The repwhoring is the worst when you're really only starting out. The reputation system is great in allowing relatively well working community moderation, but when you're joining the site, no matter your experience in the field, you have to prove yourself first. Which means you'll be answering any question that comes up and you can answer. You don't get any reputation for a successful close vote - and yet, it takes 3000 reputation to even do that.

Now that I've got the needed reputation to influence the site more, I'm mostly answering questions that aren't answered fast enough, or that have bad answers. It's much more satisfying (even though it yields less reputation) to answer a good, tough question. Downvoting, vote-closing, flagging - it only really gets possible once you cross a certain rep threshold, and it brings little "rewards" - and yet, answering the question in three sentences and getting even a single upvote means at least some reputation.

I like the suggestion that questions that were closed within 24 hours of asking should mean removing all the rep people gained from answering the question (and of course, reimbursing the associated downvote costs).

It might also help to give points to helpful flags, close votes etc. Or maybe even just showing the amount of helpful flags the given user has in his "signature" - that way, you could easily see that someone who gave hundreds of helpful flags is endorsing a question, perhaps leading to more consideration and recognition?

The fact that people with less and less skill will be joining the field is rather obvious. And in a way, it's a good thing - if frees the hands of the more advanced programmers to do more important things (including making more and more tools for the less advanced programmers, to improve the overall productivity of everyone). Fighting this is like fighting the industrial revolution. It really isn't any different from being a carpenter and being outraged about "those new table-making machines" that "steal your job".

That said, Stack Overflow shouldn't be the go-to site for the simple stupid questions about basics, not really solving any interesting problem. Perhaps it's the time to create yet another site, specifically for people who want to help others grow, not just help them with one specific problem they have? As is easily seen by the amount of answers to "bad" questions, there's plenty of those answerers on this site already. Let's give them a new playground - I'd join that too. Answering interesting, complicated problems on Stack Overflow, and helping beginners grow on Stack Playground. And in the end, perhaps that'd end up shaping more good questions for SO in the future. Instead of closing the bad questions outright, you'd move them to the new site, where they'd be dealt with accordingly, transferred with their answers and points - in the end, you'd see how much rep SO users got on good SO questions, rather than how fast they are at answering a question that just appeared. The reputation system there would probably have to work a bit differently, but that's for another discussion :)

As Stack Overflow (and the web at large) has amassed answers to literally millions of recurrent questions, people who are smart enough to do a Google search have been able to tap into this resource to get their problems solved without asking anyone's help. I for one have been a Stack Overflow member for three and a half years, but only ever posted four questions – at all of the other numerous times I came to it for help, someone else had already asked about my problem, and a third one had provided a solution.

In fact I'd reckon that today any reasonably smart person with an "average" problem can search and find answers by themselves. Therefore there's a world of questions that get answered without ever being registered (e.g. by being posted to Stack Overflow or other site).

With the middle ground all but covered, questions will virtually always come up from the extremes:

Very difficult and/or novel questions from very smart people, who did look for references, but couldn't find any;

Trivial problems from very stupid people, who couldn't bother to (or didn't realize they could) look it up by themselves.

The state of mankind being what it is, it's not hard to figure that type 2 questions will come up much more often than type 1.

hmm, bring back the homework tag, then automatically close and delete anything tagged as such 5 minutes after it's been posted. By that time the person asking the question will have gone away, planning to come back a few days later to harvest the solutions to his assignment only to find that there's no trace of his question.
He'll likely not even wonder what happened, just assume he forgot to post here in the first place.

+1. Add a close reason called "Homework", I'm sure we can come up with pretty wording for it, but in short, it's lack of effort + useless in long term (used to be "too localized").
–
NeoliskMay 1 '14 at 1:15

1

@Neolisk "easily answered by using documentation available to you" (aka your coursenotes and instruction books). "destructive to the community" (giving kids homework solutions is bad for the profession in that it causes a mass influx of unqualified workers). I'm sure there's others.
–
jwentingMay 1 '14 at 6:21

As I started to participate in SO, I was astonished and delighted that some problems which was keeping me away from bed for a half of the night were being solved even in a matter of seconds by more experienced programmers. That's really, really great. But on the other hand, when eventually I decided to try to help somebody else, the same thing that I had perceived as something great, suddenly turned pretty ugly for me.

Here I was, a new user which wasn't even allowed to comment someone's question or answer, trying to return the favour, help somebody else and gain some rep too. Because English isn't my native language, it usually takes me a bit longer to write down what I mean than it takes the other users. I had multiple situations, when after a minute I was already late and there was even more than 5 answers pretty same as mine. The funny thing is that, that these simple questions were often answered by users with reputation of 10k-100k+.

Now, somewhere above there has been used a term "rep-whore" addressing people who are answering low quality questions. The way I see it, sometimes it's the only questions left for new users to answer.

The other thing is that, it's a little bit frustrating when you see questions asked few years ago like "how does sth work" with several hundred thousands views and hundreds of upvotes just because it's a common issue and someone simply got lucky to be the first person to ask. No wonder people make a lot of duplicates on purpose and ask questions without trying anything on their own

In my opinion, users of Stack Overflow are more willing to provide small feedback to gain extra reputation points rather than send the user to read a manual.

It is no longer a place for developers who have problems but for beginners that learn how to code.

Once I had this discussion about RTFM on Stack Overflow. The conclusion was, why do I have to read a manual when I can go to Stack Overflow and write a simple question to gain an answer. Not even bothering to google it.

The cause of that is that Stack Overflow has became more popular for common questions.

A solution would be creating another Stack Exchange site where simple/trivial or well-documented questions could be moved.

The simplest solution is the easiest. We can downvote the answers and close the question. This could give a clear signal to the community what is valid for Stack Overflow.

Over time, a drop in question quality is unavoidable for the simple reason that, at some point, all of the good questions will have been answered. For example, the C tag currently has 139,000 questions. So how many good questions are there about a language that has about 30 keywords and maybe 150 standard library functions? Are there really 500 good questions per library function and 2000 good questions per keyword? I don't think so.

I think that inevitably, SO will be the victim of its own success, as all the good questions are answered. Future newbies that are smart and motivated will find the answers that they need with simple searches, and won't have any reason to post questions. So that leaves you with...

I'm currently reading the Android and Java forums, but I'm amazed at the number of questions I see along the lines of - 'my application crashed with a null pointer exception'. Usually there's some code, a stack trace that clearly identifies the line on which the NPE occurred, yet the posted code has no line numbers! So you're reduced to making a guess at the possible causes of the NPE.

But let's face it, these types of problems aren't hard to diagnose.
I suspect that people asking these questions have little idea of how to debug their code, set breakpoints, run the app in debug mode. Life must be very difficult for them without being able to do this.

So the questions are usually straightfoward to answer, but the OP will have learned nothing, and would be far better off learning how to do basic debugging.

I know this is not what Meta wants to hear, so consider it a thought experiment.

You guys know the saying about one definition of insanity being trying the same thing over and over, and expecting different results?

SO has spent the last 4+ years trying to eliminate all the bad questions, trying to discourage people from posting low-quality questions, trying to weed out "bad contributors", trying to discourage people from asking questions, basically.

Apparently it hasn't worked. If anything, the typical question quality is worse than ever.

What if the problem isn't that people are getting dumber or more helpless or more inclined to ask bad questions?

What if SO has just become hostile to people asking questions?

That would certainly discourage all the developers who actually make an effort, who don't want to be treated as idiots. Those people, the one who write interesting, high-quality questions, would just get their answers elsewhere, or do the research to find the answer themselves without posting the question.

Meanwhile, the ones who don't give a damn, who put absolutely no effort into anything, who just want answers served on a silver platter? They aren't discouraged by being treated like idiots, by being told that their questions are wrong, that that they should have followed this 8-step programme before asking their question. So they keep asking questions.

What if, in this endless chase to scare away "stupid people asking stupid questions", you have inadvertently created a hostile atmosphere which discourages those who actually had something to contribute from contributing? While, of course, those who have nothing to contribute don't give a shit that they're unwanted. They're used to that.

And these days, Google supplies an endless list of posts by disenfranchised users who have given up on the site.

Maybe, just maybe, the answer to all this is not "keep pushing to make SO even more hostile to contributors". Maybe we can't ever really get rid of all the bad questions, but we could at least stop scaring away the good ones?

Eh, most of the "stack overflow sux0rs" posts have been around for years. They're not anything new. "They aren't discouraged by being treated like idiots..." is certainly an incisive point, however. Do you have any specific recommendations for moving forward?
–
Josh CaswellMay 8 '14 at 0:47

2

If only this post contained an actionable suggestion. I agree with you in principle, especially the culture of aggressively closing questions for soft reasons seems to have given birth to a class of Wikipedia style exclusionist mods who enjoy having the power to be more right than others. That's unfortunate, even if a well-written newbie question will not get any flak from them (to the contrary, people will be very positive), apparently it helps fostering fear among new users.
–
TomalakMay 8 '14 at 3:38

4

While I don't disagree with the basic premise - SO has become too zealous and bureaucratic - most of the posts in that Google result are super lame. Have you checked them out and looked at what they argue, what kinds of questions they saw closed and what happened?
–
Pekka 웃May 8 '14 at 3:46

The problem I see

I see very few new users whose first post is a question show any effort. They, as Tim states are here for financial security and social class (even though, in my personal opinion, they in no way deserve it). We should step back and compare this to a scaled-up version of Area 51 criteria. Clearly, the target of new sites coming out of Area 51 (and a target I feel should apply to Stack Overflow) is:

A decent flow of questions per day. We're above and beyond this in most tags, and this is one thing I believe we can afford to sacrifice.

Percentage questions answered: 76% as per Stack Exchange explore sites page. This is not acceptable for a beta or a thriving site. Lowering the number of crap questions (or temporarily making deletion more readily available for fairly experienced users, on questions) should help drive this up, as well as my proposed solution below.

Avid users: We have plenty, but we should strive to see more new ones that are truly dedicated (that is, perform cleanup regularly, not just rep whores). This can clearly be addressed by encouraging cleanup and allowing avid, dedicated users to stand out more by decreasing the amount of noise.

Answers/question: 1.74776889452. Decent, but could use work. I suspect many questions are crap that gets a rapidfire answer.

Visits/day: Not considered here, but it's fairly sufficient

My proposed solution

I'm proposing this as my personal take on how to solve the problem. It obviously will be a tradeoff, and may sound radical to some.

I propose to place a moratorium on the posting of questions by new users. At first, only 5 reputation need to be gained (from editing posts well or giving an answer and receiving an upvote) it would be sufficient to post. This is on the basis that the site does not have an oracle built into the codebase that can provide answers for free. Experienced users have questions as well, and good answers from new users can help lighten the situation.

While there may be some users that have a genuinely good question that would appear to be shut out, they should be capable of answering an existing question or editing posts, if they really would be expected to put in the effort to ask a question, monitor comments, and act upon answers by accepting or commenting.

Due to the issue of robo-reviewers, it could be beneficial to check new users' suggested edits more thoroughly as the current edit queue is not overloaded, while the closevote one is, which this idea is designed to address.

Users that work by editing well or answering questions decently are not likely to be the kind of hit-and-run people that dump a question and abandon it. Granted, their posts may be maginally above crap, but they still come out marginally beneficial in the end.

And what about rep-whores?

I've considered myself at one point a slight rep-whore. From what I've seen, for me, I've answered FAQs due to the awful signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio making it difficult to find a good question to answer in a given tag, let alone a popular one where the S/N ratio is even more immense since new users posting crap will just dump a tag with the name of a language. Therefore, addressing this problem of posting crap and the awful ratio of good posts to crap posts can help address this.

requiring rep to gain from edits / answers will most likely flood the site with lame attempts to "break through" to Ask Question page by posting senseless stuff or suggesting senseless edits. Even if 99,99% (heck even if 100%) will eventually fail, this will make a tough load to handle. I can imagine thousands monkeys blindly and rapidly copying text from "known good" answers into whatever question comes them to mind. Wanna review stuff like that?
–
gnatMay 8 '14 at 11:06

1

@gnat This is true. But playing devil's advocate: Forcing them to look for answers so they can answer questions in order to gain rep might go a long way towards getting users learning how to search first before asking.
–
MadConanJun 16 at 17:14

As a relatively new programmer, I'm basically learning to code in and out of Java and C++ classes, I obtained most of my base knowledge from Visual Basic years ago..

However, I'll admit that I first came to Stack Overflow to learn some more basic skills and learn the answer to simple questions. Maybe I'm contributing to the overall problem perhaps. I don't like to think that personally - but maybe you're right.

I approached Stack Overflow in the first place because it is a site where many highly experienced programmers come to and discuss programming. Being around experienced programmers such as yourselves and reading your comments and answers inspires me to be a better programmer, ask better questions and learn from your feedback.

I don't want to take your code, I don't want to just take your answers and never return, not at all. I want to learn from my own failings and your feedback so in the future I can tackle issues with ease, and maybe help someone else down the line -- and in the case I do use your techniques I will give credit and my personal thanks.

I respect all of you that are more experienced than I am, and I respect the fact that many of you dislike the naivety of new programmers, but, some of us DO want to learn and some of us DO want to contribute eventually but are still finding our feet.

Please don't turn your backs on the perhaps 'few' new programmers that actually want to learn instead of steal; you were where we were once. Even though I agree that teaching yourself is the best way to learn, this is a good resource to grasp the basics needed to experiment and perform trial and error.

I did not learn things by asking. I learned things by coding. Thinking, solving problems and writing code. Only months and months of reading others code and writing your own (3 prototypes thrown away until the 4th does it right). SO can not do it for you. You must do it yourself. Then you will be experienced. It is easier to go and ask someone to think instead of you. But it will never help you grow so much as whey you sweat yourself. Lazy and uneducated people it is what the question is about. SO was not originally meant to be tutorial low cost site for this kind of audience
–
xmojmrMay 3 '14 at 19:26

I wasn't active on SO for a while. Sometimes I return and try to find a good question to answer, however, got to admit that you're right. Questions' quality is getting worse and worse.

One of the solutions could be to apply some kind of filter to new users (e.g. < 100 rep.), that would automatically close their question if it gots a lot of downvotes - so if they want their question to get answered they must edit & improve its quality - then it could go to reopen queue.

Although questions are getting their answers insanely quickly, I think they get their votes even faster.

It wouldn't work. A newbie asks a FAQ with half a dozen of related questions answering the problem, and you'd see a flurry of upvotes on the question. It might work if upvotes start costing some rep.
–
devnullApr 28 '14 at 16:52

@devnull: If upvote cost reputation, there should be a way to get it back. Otherwise people would be shy on upvotes. Something like - if the question was closed for any reason within 2-3 days - you don't get your reputation back. Otherwise, you get it back, to encourage healthy upvotes this way. Same for answers, i.e. you upvote an answer, and it gets deleted within 2-3 days - you lost your rep forever. However, to make it profitable, it needs to give an extra rep point, if you vote was helpful. So to upvote, it takes 1 rep, but you get 2 rep back (net +1), if it was a healthy upvote.
–
NeoliskMay 1 '14 at 1:10

The article refers to how asking an indirect question about an external factor, such as the cooperation of your teammates, can actually alter the behavior of the player responding to the question.

Along those lines, a survey-type question for new users which makes the user think about the existence of potentially similar questions that have already been answered may help guide their future behavior.

There have been several suggestions of some kind of 'tutorial' for new users but a simple questionnaire requiring some kind of ACTIVE response by new users as they are asking their first questions could be enough.

What if new users presented with the list of possible duplicates had to actively choose a reason that the potential duplicates don't apply to them?

A simple 'Does this answer your question: Yes [ ] No [ ]' or a dropdown with reasons why it doesn't apply might not be immediately helpful to anyone trying to act as a moderator but there is some potential to shape the user's behavior.

I honestly don't believe in the "it's a newbie, they just don't know how to work the site" hypothesis. "Newbie" is not part of the reason. Carelessness is. A newbie who cares will read the help the site literally pushes in their face. They will know how Markdown works. They will actually look at the preview the editor produces and will improve the question if looks ugly. They will think of including an error message they ask about and steps to reproduce it because they actually took the time and think how their question might look to a third person.
–
TomalakMay 1 '14 at 6:28

Well I've only just joined this site, but what I seem to be noticing with the webdev questions is that people come onto SO, ask their question then take the coded answer and leave, without acknowledgement of the person who submitted it. They seem to take it for granted. Or something else that infuriates me is when they ask a question, don't give enough information, then don't come back and give the information!

Honestly though, its at their own disadvantage. If they don't want to understand why the answer is the correct way to do it, then they aren't going to improve their skills or learn anything, therefore hindering their own career.

Also I see is lot of people answers that "Write a code for me" questions, just to get reputations. If people avoid answering such questions, I think people may stop asking such a questions.
–
SimzApr 30 '14 at 15:40

What is the purpose of Stack Overflow?

I would argue, to create a useful and searchable database of programming knowledge in question and answer format.

What makes a good question?

A good question is one which helps not only the user, but also future users. This is a question which is upvoted, revisited, commented upon and maintained. The level of the question doesn't matter, it could be about eigenclasses or unordered lists, provided it's general.

The test of generalisability is: "is this an issue likely to affect more than one person ever". A stack trace thrown by a popular library would be general.

A good question is

Reasonably Generalised

Asked at the correct level for the user doing the asking.

What makes a bad question?

A bad question is of the form: "Here's my code, it doesn't work, can you fix it for me?"

It's specific to a very particular problem, e.g. the user has missed a semi-colon on line 14.

It's asked at a level well above the user's skill level, and as such makes no sense eg. How do I make Facebook, when the user manifestly doesn't understand what a variable is?

I would suggest the following:

Bring back "too localised" as a reason to close - for missing semi-colon issues.

Add in a "question makes no sense" reason to close - when the question is asked so far above the user's level that it makes no sense.

Allow people with higher rep to close a question immediately.

Make a downvoted question be closable immediately.

Use voter.rep / poster.rep to determine the weight of a close vote.

Remove downvote disincentive. Rep lost on closed questions should be reset.

1: we have "can no longer be reproduced or simple typographical error" for missing semicolons. 2: We have "unclear what you're asking" to handle these. 3 to 5: discussed and shot down. 6 and 7: still being discussed IIRC. Not sure about 8.
–
Frédéric HamidiMay 2 '14 at 10:37

2

@FrédéricHamidi - 1. Fair enough, though there are classes of question which are not purely typographical, eg. when the user has mis-understood the left and right hand sides of a variable assignation. 2. Fair enough. 3 - 5. I still contend it would be better to have an easier way to shut down users without aptitude. It takes more work, and higher skilled work to shut down a question than it does to ask it. 6 - 7. Would be good. SO appears to be technically capable of this as rep is lost when a user leaves the site. 8. It would be good to distinguish between quality and quantity.
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superluminaryMay 2 '14 at 11:23

1

I'm afraid it would be hard to agree on a definitive level for a question. Some things are super difficult for one person and super trivial for the other. But I think it's entirely possible to agree on a few basic denominators that make a good question: Has code, code is syntactically correct & minimized to the relevant parts, has explanations, states the intent & the expected outcome, outlines a thought process, is formatted properly, proves some research was done (I even claim that when these basics are present, it already can't be a blatant duplicate anymore.)
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TomalakMay 2 '14 at 11:37

4

Making it easier to mark something as a duplicate (which many of these questions are) will also curtail the 'rep whoring' that you mention. Folks just won't be able to answer these with crappy two-line answers any longer because they'll be closed so quickly. We're thinking of ways to make this easier now.
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Tim Post♦May 2 '14 at 12:34